Hello Happy Pitbulls

Wii Adventure

Last week I was attending a training class on strategic thinking and the topic of work/life balance came up.

I have been working formally on an approach to work/life balance from the professional angle by working on my skills as a leader and a delegator.  I have managed to reduce the number of hours I have been working, to reduce stress about stuff I have no control over, and to find some outlets for some of the ideas I want to implement, but haven't been able to for a variety of reasons.

In the training class, it came up that my way of relaxing has so much to do with what I do for work: researching trends in web 2.0, reading my RSS feeds, connecting with people on Facebook and Twitter -- basically geek stuff.

I decided I needed something that would allow my brain to completely disconnect.  My half-marathon training has been doing that for me for a while (until my left ankle started acting up).  Someone at training suggested I get a Wii.

So, on the way home, I picked one up!  I have been lusting after the Wii for a while, and never really could justify getting one.  I am so glad I got it!  It's so much fun.  Now I just need to get some games!

Anyone have any suggestions for must-have Wii titles?

Near miss...

On the way to a training class this morning, I heard tires squeal, screeching, crashing, saw smoke and then the next thing I saw was a car coming straight at me.  On the freeway.  Did I say, right at me?  I swerved to the right and because someone was watching over me, there was no one in the next lane and the car coming at me spun around and missed me by inches.  And I'm not exaggerating.  Inches! 

I continued on driving 35 mph on an empty freeway leaving the crashed cars and congested road in the rear view mirror.

I have no idea what happened.  I thought that either I was incredibly lucky, or maybe I shouldn't have left the house today.  End of story.

So I decided life is short and on the way home, I bought a Wii.

Split Personalities

I've been blogging, tweeting, and participating in a variety of forums on the web since the early days.  I remember being part of the Well community in San Francisco, participating from a dos shell before we had the graphical web as we know it today.

I'm starting to feel a bit fragmented and am working through this issue.

I am on Twitter, Facebook, GovLoop, LinkedIn, Delicious, Flickr, Posterous, the Federal Web Managers' Council Forum at webcontent.gov, numerous wikis, an internal blog for my Web team at work, and I manage a web site for my temple (which I am in the process of redesigning).

That's a lot of activity for one person, but I'm starting to figure it out.

I'm wondering whether there's value in maintaining this blog that justifies the $300.00/year price tag that comes with Typepad.  With so many free tools, I'm thinking not...

Road to the Shamrock'n Half Marathon

This morning I kicked off a new stab at half marathoning with the Fleet Feet Sacramento training group.  The Shamrock'n Half Marathon is on March 15, about 2 months away.  The last Shamrock'n I ran was back in 2007.  I finished in a pokey 3:45.  Last year I planned to enter, but that was right when my ankle stuff started up.

My doctor never promised me I'd be able to do the half marathons again, but after I started doing 5Ks again, he encouraged me to give it a whirl and see how it goes.  Since my surgery I have done up to about 7 miles, but I'll have to see how it goes when we start getting up there in mileage.  There's a big difference between 7 and 13 miles.  I know in the few half marathons I have done, miles 11-13 are the hardest for me. 

Today I did about 3.5 miles (from Howe to just past Watt on the levee above the American River Trail) and felt really strong.  I kept a solid pace (I was happy to take only 1:15 minutes more on the way back as on the way out.  As I recall from previous training, things will start to click in weeks 3 or 4 after all the short training and speed work.  I'm pretty determined just to walk this one.  I think run/walk is going to be too much. 

From back when I was non-weightbearing and spent about 6 months in that damn boot...I'm in a great place now.  Stay tuned!

The ultimate answer

On Monday, I will be 42.  I remember when my mom turned 40 (oh, and that was NOT a fun day as my family can attest!), and that seemed so old!  I am definining what 42 means for myself.  Other than the fact that I am falling apart in my old age (see Blinky, see Ankle Angst), I am modeling many of the traits of generation y. That is, the traits of the Net Generation. I relate more to the students who work for me who are 20 years younger in terms of how I blog, use Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Friendfeed, and how I workship the incoming Obama administration for how they will transform the public's expectation of government transparency and communication. 

But what I have been looking forward to most, as this birthday approaches, is that I can spend a whole year with my age as the ultimate answer.  Urban legend (or my fading memory) vaguely remembers that a bunch of us all put down 42 as the answer to an impossible calculus problem on a test in AP calculus, and we got it right, but didn't get full credit for not showing our work.  Hey Chrissie and Brett, did I make that up?  I think you were both in my class (26 years ago!).

Birthday weekend means my husband has to cater to me.  So far, he's earned major points for doing laundry while I was at work, and then actually helping me to fold it and put it away.  Plus he called the Culligan water softener guys to fix our water softener so we can actually use the dishwasher again without leaving evil Woodland well water scale all over everything.  My husband is a gift (I know, that's sappy, but it's true!).

Tonight...surprise new restaurant birthday dinner.  Tomorrow, birthday fun with my dad.  Monday, the actual day -- well, I have the day off, Mike is working, and I plan to hit the mani/pedi place and kick back with the dogs.  The gift of time is the best gift of all.

Happy birthday weekend to me!

Inspirational words for a new year

If you've struggled with getting things done in the past and your new year's resolutions focus on productivity and the like, I encourage you to follow these words from @communicatrix, whose wisdom was introduced to me on Twitter.  And this video has some language which some may deem not to be work safe.  Thanks too, to @marilynm for blogging about this first.

Being a geek comes easy for me...

On a typical day, I spend about 10 hours or so at a computer.  At work, if I'm not in meetings, I'm at my computer either responding to emails, writing emails, managing emails...you know the drill.  At home, I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, or just surfing.  What I do in my personal time tends to overlap into my work life, which makes it difficult for me to separate out my work persona from my personal self.  I'm always researching new communication methods, web 2.0 tools, reading about government use of these tools, and looking for ways to apply what I love about the web to my work.

So, my challenge for 2009 is to try to figure out how to separate out the two aspects of my life...if at least just a little. 

The way I really see it is that I am lucky to do for a job what I love to do in life.  I'm a geek girl, and I love the web.  I love connecting and communication with people (strangers or not).  So, in order to look at making my personal self more "whole", I need to look at whether being online at night after a days work is really my way of relaxing (which has been my assertion for years), or whether it's causing me stress because I'm not able to disconnect from my work and focus in other personal areas.

Someone recently suggested that I stop doing research about new Web 2.0 tools and communication methods because I would feel less frustrated about how long it takes to introduce them at work.  That doesn't make any sense to me at all.  My feeling is that you fill yourself with as much information as possible, so that when the opportunity arises, you are ready to go.  I don't know -- maybe it's the overachiever in me.

So, just to see if it helps, I'm going to try to fill my time with things other than geek things outside of work.  You know...dogs, music, getting out and about...we'll see how that goes.  Any suggestions, please holler!

In the meantime, I'm enjoying another 3-day weekend with my husband.  We'll be looking for movies and firewood, but not necessarily in that order.

Happy New Year, all.

Reflections on 2008

There's nothing new and original about an end of year blog post, reflecting back on all the major events of the year.  In fact, I must have read about 100 of them so far.

There's been so much on my mind the past few months, and as I start to plan for the year ahead, I had to take stock in all the things that happened this year that will help shape my year to come.

1. Work.  Too much work.  I love work, but anyone who knows me or who has been reading for a while knows that I work way too much.  Sometimes I think it's a way to avoid real life, the stuff I have going on at home, with family, etc.  Sometimes I know it's just the overachiever in me.  So for 2009, a little less work, a little more efficiency, and a little more "me" time.  That's the menu.
2. Woodland.  Our hometown hero, Dustin Pedroia, won the MLB MVP award.  How cool is that.  Enough said.
3. Change.  Yes We Can. Yes We Did. We elected Barack Obama president.  Again, enough said.
4. Social Media. I've gotten serious about my Tweeple, my Facebook pals and my Mob Wars Mob.  Both personally and professionally.  And because of item 3 above, we have a real hope of having government be truly transparent through the evolution of social media tools being used for communication, first through the campaigns, and now through the change.gov site.  Love it!  And as a government employee, I'm working hard to introduce the same level of transparency through our web communication strategies.  It's exciting (a contributing factor to item 1).
5. The Dead Pool: George Carlin. Paul Newman. Eartha Kitt.  Tim Russert. Majel Barrett-Rodenberry. Bettie Page. Odetta. Michael Crichton. Studs Turkel. Don LaFontaine. Isaac Hayes.  Bernie Mac. Harvey Korman. Sydney Pollack. Danny Federici. Charlton Heston. Anthony Minghella. Steve Fossett. Heath Ledger.  My mother-in-law, Angela Cabias. RIP, all of you.
6. Mexico. A perfect end to a hectic year. I have had my personal reboot.

The list could go on and on. It's almost time to call it a day for 2008. Here's hoping 2009 brings happiness, health, and prosperity.  And peace.  Yeah, we need us some of that.

Back from Mexico

Another Puerto Vallarta excursion is behind us now.  Mike and I just returned from a week in Mexico in the most amazing weather.  Since this was our second trip to Puerto Vallarta, we knew how to get around better this time, and we had planned our agenda.

We were lucky to arrive just in time for the Festival of the Lady of Guadalupe, a 12 day celebration that takes place between December 1 and December 12.  We did a bunch of research about this before we arrived on December 10th, so we knew that there would be numerous processions throughout the city, culminating in a big mass and giant street festival on December 12th.  To participate in something that's such a huge part of the culture of a city was so cool.  We were able to walk along with the procession and I had the La Guadalupana song in my head for the entire trip. I've got some more pix on Flickr, and many more to come.

Part of my adventure has to do with my internet access.  I had planned to go on our trip and have a complete digital disconnect.  I did this partially.  I had no contact with work, and quite honestly, didn't think about work at all.  But, I wasn't able to totally escape my geekiness.  I had activated an international calling plan so my dad could contact me if he had any emergencies, but didn't go with an international roaming plan for data.  When I first arrived, I noticed my phone didn't work for the internet or email, so all was good.  Then something happened. I was able to access my twitter account.  So I tweeted.  Then, I realized I could push sync my email, which meant I could upload photos to my flickr account.  Until I got a text message from AT&T letting me know my international data usage was very high.  To the tune of $365!  I called their free international number and they were nice enough to add an international data plan so I only had to pay $25.99, but I took the rest of the vacation to go data-free.  Lesson learned.

It's hard to recap every minute of every day, but our basic day went something like this:

• Coffee on the patio in the morning
• Take the bus to downtown and eat somewhere amazing around the beach around 10 or 11
• Tool around downtown, shopping, checking stuff out, and either walk back or take the bus back.
• Lounging by the pool in the afternoon, maybe a tropical drink and some guacamole
• Cocktails around 6, and then bus into downtown for dinner at sunset
• Roaming around downtown, either joining in with the processions, or checking out shops and clubs.

Seriously, I could have stayed forever.  It was so mellow and kick back.

One thing that was missing: The Happy Pitbulls.  We missed them so much while we were gone. We had to take every opportunity to find the dirty, mangy dogs on the street and give them some loving.  Dogs in Mexico have a really different life than they do in our house.  At least the ones we saw.  There was only one doggy we met that was half bull terrier and half dalmatian that seemed really happy and like he was well taken care of.  That dog made us happy, but made us miss our dogs.  I think this was the longest we've been away from them ever!  Our next vacation will have to be to someplace that takes dogs (Mendocino...here we come!).

But until then...it's back to business.  Back to work on Monday...hopefully my serenity will last a while.  At least through the holiday season.  A couple of short work weeks should help preserve it pretty nicely.

Mejor Pink: Major Drink

Mejor Pink: Major Drink,
originally uploaded by marlinex.

Up until Friday, I worked with this guy who is a super-genius. He's like 15 years younger than me, but he's already got a bunch of different ventures going, including the recently launched Mejor Tequila line.

He's leaving state service to get his MBA at UC Davis School of Management (not too shabby) and I happened to be one of the people who tirelessly (just kidding, Angel!) wrote recommendations and filled out forms, and all that good stuff, when he was applying for grad school. So, just jokingly, I asked for a parting gift before he left, and whaddayaknow...I end up with this bottle of Mejor Pink on my chair after a lunch break.

Mike and I popped the cork on it tonight to check it out. It's super smooth -- not like firewater like some tequila I have had. I had some neat in our groovy shot glasses. Very nice Angel! I wish you great success.

Get Mejor products from fine establishments near you, perhaps.